Mike Novogratz equates crypto crash to Long Term Capital Management crisis

Michael Novogratz, a crypto investor, and CEO of Galaxy Digital, told CNBC that the cryptocurrency market is undergoing the same turmoil triggered by Long Term Capital Management in 1998.

Long Term Capital Management was a highly leveraged hedge fund run by Nobel Prize-winning economists and Wall Street traders. When the company went bust, the U.S. Federal Reserve was forced to bail it out to prevent a collapse of the financial markets because of Wall Street investment banks’ exposure to the fund.

Novogratz said:

“We are going through what feels to me a little bit like a Long Term Capital Management moment in crypto.

It was the big hedge fund with all the leverage, and when it started unwinding, there was repercussions everywhere. We are seeing that in the crypto space right now.”

Novogratz, who had invested in LUNA, blamed the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the ongoing Celsius crisis for accelerating the deleveraging in the market.

“We’ve gone to the level that should be close to a bottom. $21,000 bitcoin $1,000 ethereum. There’s been a tremendous amount of capitulation and fear.

Usually not a good area to sell, but it doesn’t mean we can’t go lower. I think the macro environment is still pretty challenging out there.”

Novogratz’s comments come as the crypto market faces one of the worst crashes in history. The total crypto market capitalization has dipped below $1 trillion, while Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $21,000 on June 14, according to Cryptoslate data. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $22,481 while Ethereum’s  (ETH) price hovered around $1,225.